Crash Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Crash Essay

Crash

Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Crash

Crash is a 2004 film that analyzes racial and social tensions that are rampant in society. Crash is divided into a series of vignettes that converge through a series of automobile accidents. The film features an all-star cast that includes Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, Michael Pena, Chris Bridges, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Frasier, Terence Howard, Ryan Phillippe, Larenz Tate, and Thandie Newton. Issues of race and ethnicity, in addition to gender, can be seen in the storyline that involves Dillon, Phillipe, Howard, and Newton.

In the film, Matt Dillon plays racist LAPD Officer John Ryan and Ryan Phillipe is his more tolerant partner, Tom Hansen. In the film, Ryan and Hansen pull over TV director Cameron Thayer and his wife, Christine, because the vehicle that they are driving matches the description of a vehicle that was recently stolen. In the first encounter between the four is not only prompted by the fact that the vehicle that the couple are driving matches the description of a vehicle that was stolen in the vicinity, but it is also motivated by racial profiling.In the film, prior to the encounter between Ryan, Hansen, and the Thayers, two black men have just stolen a black Lincoln Navigator. Just as Ryan and Hansen hear the description of the vehicle and the suspects, the Thayers drive past them in a black Lincoln Navigator. While it was necessary and prudent for Ryan and Hansen to pull over the Thayers based upon the vehicle description, once they realized that the Thayers did not match the suspects' descriptions they should have been let to continue their journey home. However, fueled by previous frustrations, Ryan decides to further interrogate and harass the Thayers; Hansen, on the other hand, tries to convince Ryan that the Thayers vehicle is not the one that they are looking fore because the….....